Quote from: phorensic on October 17, 2011, 06:58:19 PM

I get idles here and there all the time. My cgminer says "Pool is not providing work fast enough". It doesn't bother me because it is such a small percentage of the good work that is getting pulled/submitted. All the other features of the pool outweigh the issue.

Unfortunately I don't feel the same way about the issue. About 3 weeks ago the pool was cut down to just 2 servers with PoolServerJ, with stale rates averaging 0.2% and no idles in sight. Then last week everything started to have hiccups, and as the DDoS happened the pool began breaking down, even when I added back 5 pushpool VPS nodes to help last night. It's a problem that is making me wonder if this is all worth it anymore.

I'm looking at some major shifts with the pool in the next 1-2 weeks. PPS merged mining tests are a big part of it. Odds are I will be closing down the primary pool and bringing up a "new pool" in its place so I can implement a much better frontend (6 months of updates/added features have not been kind to the pool) with a fresh database.

I'll be putting up a poll this week on the BTC Guild website to see what the users want:

A) Payout Change
  1) Proportional
  2) SMPPS
  3) PPLNS
  4) Straight PPS [will require a much larger fee due to risk]

B) Fee Change
  1) 0% Fee - I'll deal with the pool randomly failing/idling
  2) 1.5% Fee - Still cheapest of the "Big 3", with all current perks [120 block wait for confirmations (no invalid protection)]
  3) 2% Fee - Tied for lowest of the "Big 3", with all current perks [with no waiting on block confirmations (includes invalids)]

Right now, it looks like SMPPS or PPLNS and a 2% fee without 120 block confirmation waiting. The SMPPS will start with a couple hundred BTC as a buffer. Either way, merged mining will be a part of the new BTC Guild when its done.